The atmosphere is the atmosphere in the pub used in a Weather Channel campaign.

REMEMBER how the sitcom ''Cheers'' was centered on a make-believe bar where, the theme song promised, ''everybody knows your name''? Well, a comedic campaign for a cable network is centered on a make-believe bar where everybody knows the name of the hurricane that hit your hometown.

The campaign, which begins on Monday, promotes the Weather Channel, a network owned by Landmark Communications that is available in more than 68 million American households. Television commercials by TBWA Chiat/Day focus on the staff and regular patrons of an imaginary bar named the Front.

The fictitious tavern is meant to be a gathering place for weather fans in the same manner that a sports bar is a gathering place for football fans or ''Cheers'' was a gathering place for fans of libidinous ex-pitchers, lazy mail carriers and lippy, loopy barmaids. Indeed, the campaign carries the theme ''Weather fans, you're not alone.''

The Front is portrayed as a cozy spot that is as cool as it is hot, decorated with meteorological memorabilia like autographed rain slickers, barometers, photographs of weather forecasters and thermometers. The bartender knows more about Force Five tornadoes than the storm chasers in ''Twister.'' The customers try out pickup lines like ''Do you ever just stare at a cumulus cloud until it turns into a monkey?'' And all the big-screen TV's are tuned to the Weather Channel.

''It's basically not to let the Weather Channel be seen as a commodity or a utility,'' said Lee Clow, chairman and chief creative officer at TBWA Chiat/Day, part of the TBWA International unit of Omnicom Group, ''to add personality and charm to something that could be very 'left brain,' factual, clinical.''

''ESPN taking on more personality, adding entertainment value, is part of the reason for its success,'' Mr. Clow said yesterday in a telephone interview from the agency's Venice, Calif., office. His reference was to the sports cable network owned by the Walt Disney Company, which is promoted with a popular series of humorous commercials by Wieden & Kennedy.

The Weather Channel campaign, with a budget of more than $5 million, resulted from research that began a year ago.

''We found that we do very well as a brand in delivering functional benefits,'' said Steve Clapp, vice president for strategic marketing at the network in Atlanta, like ''expertise, accuracy, convenience.''

But despite that ''rational relationship with viewers,'' he added, ''to grow we know we needed to establish an emotional relationship, too.''

And because the research found many viewers who ''really do have a passion for the weather and the Weather Channel,'' Mr. Clapp said, the weather-bar concept was born ''to communicate our passion for weather and try to make that emotional connection to the viewers.''

The commercials are indeed emotional. In one spot, for instance, a man enters the Front, soaked from a storm, complaining, ''I hate the rain.'' A regular customer, overhearing him, replies, ''Well, maybe the rain hates you,'' then shouts, ''How can we appreciate the sun if we don't have the rain?''

In another commercial, two patrons of the Front wait for a Weather Channel show, ''Weekend Outlook.'' Both have their faces painted as sports fans paint their faces in team colors. Here, though, one man's face is blue for cold temperatures and the other's face is red for warm temperatures.

The emotional pitch is intended to ''tap into the awe, mystery and wonder of weather'' felt by many Americans, said Amy Pollard, brand marketing director at the Weather Channel, and persuade them to consider the network ''the Carl Sagan of weather, the Jacques Cousteau of weather.''

The commercials will run on local stations in Chicago and New York as well as on the Weather Channel. Print advertisements will appear next month in consumer and trade publications, based on letters from weather fanatics who are devoted Weather Channel watchers.

Though the commercials are the first from TBWA Chiat/Day since landing the Weather Channel account in February, the agency has been creating newspaper ads for the network for six months, which appear each Friday under the weather map in USA Today.

Those ads are emotional, too, consisting of sassy sentences. One declares: ''Every job has its pressures. Ours just happen to be barometric.'' Another asserts, ''If hell freezes over, you'll hear it here first.'' And on the day of the Academy Awards, the Weather Channel became a film critic, proclaiming, ''Personally, we hope 'Shine' wins Best Picture.''

Though the commercials are premised on the Weather Channel and TBWA Chiat/Day putting up a false Front, it may one day be real.

''We're talking about building a Front on part of the Weather Channel stage in Atlanta,'' Mr. Clow said, ''for people to use as the in-house commissary.''

Interestingly, the Weather Channel campaign is being introduced amid an intense debate over another tongue-in-cheek campaign by TBWA Chiat/Day for another network, the ABC unit of Disney. That campaign, carrying the theme ''TV is good,'' parodies typical network promotions with wry paeans to the joys of television. Critics have admonished the agency and ABC for mocking what they consider serious problems like the poor quality of programming and the time Americans devote to watching television.

Those ''who take it too seriously,'' Mr. Clow said of the ABC campaign, ''probably take a lot of things too seriously. It's all in fun.''

And ''people who love to come down on TV,'' he added, ought to ''get a life.''